The Thirteenth Man (11 page)

His first concern was to kill the automated emergency distress beacon. Since he'd already hacked into the boat's systems, that only took a few seconds. Then he identified several other changes he needed to make to remain undetected once Goutain's ship did return. And he had to assume it would. Then somehow he had to get down onto the surface of Tachaann, preferably alive.

The lifeboat was equipped to keep a dozen ­people alive for twenty days, so Charlie alone could survive for a long time—­that wasn't the issue.
Fuel
was the issue. He was at the edge of Tachaann nearspace, and his uncontrolled ejection from the up-­transition had left him with a strong vector at a sharp angle to the plane of the ecliptic. He'd have to do a slow burn now to put the boat into a highly eccentric orbit. Then, taking advantage of the system gravity well, in fifty-­seven days another burn would slow him enough for a controlled entry into Tachaann's atmosphere, hopefully with a little fuel left over for a decent landing.

He set up the first burn, fired the boat's engines, confirmed his trajectory, then slept for several hours. When he awoke he stuffed himself into the med unit with instructions for its AI to fix him as well as it could. He had fifty-­seven days to wait.

 

CHAPTER 11

NEW FRIENDS

T
he planet Tachaann could not boast of any serious strategic or commercial resources. It had a livable atmosphere and reasonable gravity with large landmasses, but the soil was not of sufficient quality to warrant the investment required for large commercial agricultural production, nor were there sufficient quantities of heavy metals present to justify serious mining operations. Its only claim to fame was that it was a convenient supply and refitting point on a major shipping lane, though it wasn't actually a necessary stop. Many ships merely used it as a convenient point to down-­transit for a navigational fix and realignment, without even stopping. It had a small orbital station that provided supplies for ships that did stop, and one reasonably large city on the planet's surface. The city, named Ellitah, was an open port, with a reputation as a haven for pirates, smugglers, thieves, and cutthroats.
It could be worse,
Charlie thought.
I could be de Lunis.

Assuming Goutain's ship did return for him, Charlie was banking on the fact that his highly eccentric, out-­of-­the-­ecliptic orbit would put him outside of their most likely search pattern. With the lifeboat's systems running at bare minimum, he hoped they'd miss him in the vast volume of the solar system. They'd probably search the space between the lifeboat's launch point and Tachaann, then sit in orbit for a while watching for a lifeboat reentry. Charlie hoped that long before the fifty-­seven days had elapsed, Goutain would grow bored, assume Charlie had made it to the planet's surface, drop some troops down there to search for him, then go elsewhere with his warship.

What he didn't account for was how bored
he
grew, and by the end of the fifty-­seven days Charlie was going stir-­crazy. With almost maniacal fervor he set up the reentry burn, excited for something to do. His luck held and the entry into atmosphere and landing went well. The countryside surrounding Ellitah was quite arid with little vegetation. Charlie set the lifeboat down in a small canyon about twenty kilometers from the city. It would never lift again so he stripped it of everything useful. It provided clothing for almost any kind of climate, simple military fatigues without insignia, meaning he'd be reasonably anonymous. He made up a small pack, stuffed it with some ration packs and a careful selection of drugs from the medical cabinet. He no longer needed them, but he might pick up a little money by selling them on the street. They wouldn't bring in much more than the price of a ­couple meals, but he was looking forward to something other than rations. The med unit had fixed him up reasonably well, but it had no cosmetic capability, and only limited facility for reconstructing the orbit of his eye. So while everything was once again functional, a field of nasty scars and distorted skin covered the right side of his face. As for weapons, all he came up with was a wrench and a knife.

The twenty klicks to Ellitah was an easy two-­day hike, and he timed it so that he entered the city during the anonymous hours of late evening. It wasn't hard to find the district where spacers hung out; he just asked a cabby where a spacer went for a good time. The district itself was a maze of saloons and gambling halls and whorehouses, the streets filled with spacers and prostitutes. He wandered the streets for a good part of the night, trying to get a feel for the place. He could eat ration packs for several days, and sleep in an alley somewhere—­the weather was warm and dry—­and with the kind of men he saw wandering the streets it would be best to move cautiously.

His second day in the city he traded a ­couple of kikkers for a heavy overcoat, which improved anonymity, and on the third day he sold some narcotics to pick up a little money. He bought a newspaper printed on old-­fashion vellum that would disintegrate in a few days and eagerly scanned it hoping for news of Cesare. Unfortunately there was nothing about the duke, though quite a bit about Aagerbanne.

The occupation had begun with a brutal assault intended to prevent any resistance from arising. And at first it had worked, but during the fifty-­seven days he'd been in orbit approaching Tachaann, the Free Aagerbanni Resistance—­FAR—­had formed and started fighting back with guerilla tactics. At one point they'd brought down a Syndonese troop transport, killing two hundred thirty-­one soldiers. The Syndonese responded by executing a like number of civilians. Charlie didn't think FAR could last long without someone on the outside supplying arms and equipment. It was a shame none of the Nine were interested in supporting them.

That evening he returned to his makeshift bed rather content. He slept in the corner of an alley on a soft pile that he'd made by crumpling up carefully selected, nonsmelly bits of refuse. Burrowing into the pile hid him reasonably well from anyone who might wander down the alley.

He lay awake for a while wondering what he would do next. His first instinct was to get back to the Realm as soon as possible, but it would take him quite a while to scrape up the money for an off-­planet ticket. And as he thought about it further, he didn't have the protections afforded the nobility. If
Charlie Cass
showed up anywhere in the Realm, Nadama or Goutain would have him quietly executed. No, he'd have to bide his time and scrounge up a false identity before leaving Tachaann, which wouldn't be cheap.

Without a stroke of luck, his options were quite limited, so he'd have to just wait and see. Though, even with those disturbing thoughts, he had no trouble falling asleep.

“Y
ou big, strong man. You like suck, or you like fuck?”

Charlie snapped awake at the sound of the voice, but remained still and silent. A whore and a spacer were walking down the alley toward him, and he guessed he was about to get a rather lurid show. But then near him he heard a voice whisper in Syndonese, “Here they come. Be quiet,” and he realized three men stood in the shadows just an arm's length from him.

“I like 'em both, bitch,” the spacer with the whore growled. He pressed her against a wall and lifted her skirt.

She pressed her pelvis against his hand. “You pay first. Fifty dikkas for fuck, again fifty dikkas for suck.”

The three men near Charlie stepped out of the shadows. One of them said, “We don't like your prices, cunt,” and all four of them grabbed her. She started to scream, but one of them slapped her hard, stuffed some sort of gag in her mouth, and tied it in place. “We're taking the special discount rate. Four of us, for free.”

Shit,
Charlie thought.
They're going to assault her
. And as much as he wanted to just lie low—­anything he did could bring attention to the fact that Charlie Cass was not, in fact, dead—­he couldn't just lie there and let this happen.

He'd kept the wrench and knife from the lifeboat and he waited until three of them had her pinned down, with the fourth between her legs, pulling down his pants, before he erupted from the pile of rubbish. He hit one on the side of the head with the wrench and the man went down. He caught another on the top of the head, kicked the third in the gut, and spun to face the fourth, who'd climbed to his feet and held a knife of his own. With her hands free the prostitute pulled out her gag and started screaming.

The fellow with the knife faced Charlie squarely, but one of the others tackled him from behind and he went down. Charlie slashed the arm of the one who had tackled him and he let go, so Charlie rolled away as his other opponent bore down on him with his knife. “When you're down in a knife or hand fight,” Roacka had told him, “don't waste time getting up. That's when they'll take you.”

Charlie kicked out in a leg sweep and the man went down between Charlie and the two that were still up. Charlie scrambled to his feet, put his back to a wall, and crouched into a knife-­fighting stance. And then the alley filled with a mob of angry, shouting men. Some of them hit Charlie's assailants from behind; others scooped up the whore carefully and carried her away crying. Still others faced Charlie, but with the knife in his hands and his back to a wall they kept their distance. The whore's family and friends had come to the rescue. They had the four assailants disarmed and pinned to the ground, and Charlie surrounded.

They babbled back and forth in a language Charlie seemed to recognize, but they spoke too fast, something about the spacers hurting Janice. He eventually recognized the language, a variant form of one of the more common standards. They were trampsies, and that meant they were all family, and clearly they thought Charlie was in it with the other four. A young one swaggered forward and smirked at Charlie's knife. He pulled his own and bent into a proper fighting stance, showing off by passing the knife back and forth from hand to hand. Roacka would've kicked him in the ass for showing off. The young fellow's friends shouted encouragement—­probably their best knife fighter, and they were now going to have a little show as he cut up Charlie.

He feinted at Charlie once, then again. If he was their best he wasn't that good, but good enough considering he'd probably learned in the streets rather than drilling for years with Roacka and two Kinathin fighting machines. He feinted a third time and Charlie pretended to react clumsily, exposed his left side a bit, and the young fellow thought he saw a weakness. His fourth lunge was a legitimate attack. Charlie feinted to the right as if protecting his weak left side and he fell for it. Charlie caught his knife hand just above the wrist, and with a quick tug pulled him forward, adding to his momentum. Then he swung his wrist back over the fellow's head, dropping him neatly on his back in the alley with a nice thud. As his friends surged forward, Charlie bent the fellow's wrist at an odd angle, took the knife out of his hand, leaned down and pressed the edge to the fellow's throat. Everyone froze.

Charlie made an effort at their language. “Me not with them Syndonese.”

An older version of the young fellow stepped forward, spit at Charlie's feet and spoke in standard. “You hurt him, you die slow.”

Charlie removed the knife from the boy's throat. “I hurt no one,” he said as he laid both knives on the ground and stepped back. The boy surged upward, grabbed both knives as he did so, and charged at Charlie. He caught one of the boy's wrists again, but the boy drew a line of fire down Charlie's forearm with the other knife. Someone tackled them both, then they lifted Charlie off his feet and pinned him to the alley wall. The boy stood facing him, holding both knives with no one restraining him.

“Stopping, stopping, stopping,” the whore screamed as she came running down the alley, accompanied by two other hookers and a small girl that looked to be in her early teens. “Him not with them. Him them stopping.” The four girls pushed the men aside, shoved and elbowed their way between Charlie and the boy with the knives, forming a small cordon around Charlie.

“You ain't hurting him, Willie,” the first hooker shouted at the boy, smeared makeup streaming down her face, “or I cut your balls off. Momma Toofat says bring him.”

They dragged Charlie off with his arms pinned behind his back, pulled him into a nearby saloon, past occupied tables and into a back room. They sat him in a chair and tied him there, then two of them sat down to watch him and wait.

Charlie never did find out what happened to the four Syndonese spacers, though he assumed it was not pleasant and they did not survive it. But after about five minutes a big, fat woman waddled into the room and sat down facing him. The three whores, the young girl, the young knife fighter, and the older version of the younger man all accompanied her. She barked something in trampsie too fast for him to follow, and one of the men stood and approached Charlie with a knife. Charlie figured this was it, but instead the man cut his bonds, freeing his arms. The old woman reached out and took his injured arm, raised it to look at the slash there and the blood dripping on the floor. “We owe you, stranger,” she said in standard. She barked more orders; one of the whores produced a wet towel and a bottle of booze, knelt down in front of him and started cleaning the wound.

The old woman let go of his arm, took his chin in one hand, and turned his head from side to side. She said something in trampsie that Charlie didn't understand, and at the look on his face she switched to standard. “You once pretty boy.”

Charlie shrugged. “Not anymore.”

“I'm Momma Toofat. You saved Janice Likesiteasy.” She nodded toward the whore, who was actually quite pretty, dark curly hair down to her shoulders, big brown eyes.

She smiled at Charlie through dark red lips, the left side of her face puffing up from the slap the spacer had given her. She said, “Thanks. Them fuckers going to hurt me.”

Momma Toofat turned on her and shouted, “And you're stupid girl who's going to learn big lesson starting tomorrow.” Janice lowered her eyes.

Momma turned back to Charlie, and nodding toward the young boy and the older man she said, “Willie Cutsgood cut your arm, and Willie's father Nano Neverlose.”

The whore cleaning his wounded arm smiled up at him. The opposite of Janice, she was all blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a skirt so tight it appeared almost painted on, and a bustier bursting with cleavage. “I'm Sally Wantsalot.” She pointed to the third whore, a redhead, frizzy wild hair, black lipstick, green eyes. “Trina Godowna.” Then she pointed at the little girl in blond pigtails and what looked like a school uniform. “Becky Neverenough.”

Momma interrupted. “I think maybe we change you name to Sally Talkstoomuch.”

Sally focused on the chore of cleaning the slash on Charlie's arm.

Momma said to Charlie, “What's your name?”

Charlie hesitated. “Frank,” he lied. “Just Frank.”

She caught his hesitation and he suspected she knew he was lying, though that didn't seem to bother her. “No, you Frankie Oncepretty. And we owe you debt. How we pay?”